Poetry

Paul Williamson: On a Branch

Paul Williamson

On a Branch A finely tiger coloured sporran of bees with over a thousand animal souls a swarm in the surge of spring hangs on a small gum tree in the reserve. Workers fly off and back drowsy with gorged honey that scents the air for twenty metres around. Within, the old queen waits on news of her next home. Her former hive is close in the giant eucalypt with the glinting stream of wings and the daughter queen. I cared for hives as a teenager, a rural cotton-clad rent collector with gauze mask bearing an iron hive…